Jetbook Color and Kyobo Mirasol e-Reader Comparison Video | Good E-Reader - eBooks, Publishing and Comic News
Feb
26

Jetbook Color and Kyobo Mirasol e-Reader Comparison Video

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Welcome to another exclusive Good e-Reader Comparison Video! Today we check out the two latest entrants to the color e-paper market with e-Ink Triton and Mirasol. These two technologies give you a taste of color e-paper in very distinctive ways.

e-Ink Triton is e-Ink Holdings’ first venture into producing true color e-paper. e-Ink Pearl is their previous generation technology and is showcased in many popular e-readers currently on the market. The Kindle Touch, Sony PRS-T1, and Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch all use it. The Jetbook Color is literally the first e-reader in the world to have true color e-paper and the results are striking.

Mirasol has been developing their color e-paper solution for a series of tablets that give you very low battery draw and provide rich colors. Mirasol closely resembles Pixel Qi screens in the respect that it functions in the sun very well. Most tablets like the iPad, Nook Color, and Kindle Fire don’t perform well in the direct sunlight, and often you get glare that obfuscates the screen. Mirasol is not phased by direct light and gives you the ability to use it in any circumstances, including dark rooms.

This video gives you a full comparison on how magazines, newspapers, comic books, ebooks, and PDF files look. If you are interested in either of these technologies or how content ends up looking on both screen platforms, this video is for you!


Michael Kozlowski (3022 Posts)

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the Huffington Post, CNET and more. Michael frequently travels to international events such as IFA, Computex, CES, Book Expo and a myriad of others. If you have any questions about any of his articles, please send an email to michael@goodereader.com


Related posts:

  1. Kyobo Mirasol e-Reader Now Available in Canada and the USA
  2. Kyobo Book Centre Offers New Mirasol e-Reader in South Korea
  3. Kyobo Mirasol eReader Gets the Video Demo Treatment
  4. Unboxing the New Kyobo Mirasol Color e-Reader
  5. Kyobo Mirasol Color e-Reader Review
  6. Hands on Video Review of the Kyobo Mirasol e-Reader
Categories : Good E-Reader Videos

  • Pingback: Color-eReader im Vergleichstest: Jetbook Color und Kyobo Mirasol eReader [Video] | eBook-Fieber

  • Torchelq

    it can be interesting to make the test again , but without back lightning for the mirasol screen

  • zinj

    Glad I bought the Kyobo.

  • uli

    First of all: As I mentioned in my comment on the other Jetbook review, the resolution of the JBC is NOT 1200×1600. It is 600×800 if you do not count the color subpixels but the actual pixels maikng up the screen resolution. Therefore, the Kyobo is the device with the higher resolution (768×1024)!

    Colors: “…a little bit more vibrant…”, “…a little bit richer…” Are you kidding me? The Mirasol just displays red as red and blue as blue in the Superman comic. The Triton displays red as a dirty wine-red and blue as a light gray-blue. Superman’s face really looks (kryptonytely) pale on the JBC. And this is NOT a matter of the graphic novel’s age.

    Speed: Mirasol: super-fast, E-Ink Triton: super-slow

    Touch capability: Mirasol: farily responsive, E-Ink Triton: sometimes doesn’t even respond to the stylus?! (lol at 10:05-10:20)

    ==>> Mirasol wins!

    However, I don’t like this metallic shimmer of the Mirasol. It seems to always have a viewing-angle dependent brightness and color gradient that covers the displayed image. This is not the case with the e-ink screen which really looks like paper. I won’t buy either one of the two ebook readers.

    Instead, I keep waiting for the first Liquavista products that will hopefully be brought to market by Samsung soon. The big advantage of the electrowetting technology is that it allows the sub-pixels to be arranged above each other. This will lead to much higher screen resolutions and color saturations. The first generation of Liquavista devices will unfortunately use conventional sub-pixels (aligned beneath each other in a single plane), but they will already have frame rates comparable to Mirasol and maybe even a better battery lifetime!

  • ProDigit

    @ all, and @ULI:disqus :
    Poster ULI @9b951f1c24b442982d67b5905a79f4b8:disqus’s incorrect in saying the Jetbook Color resolution.
    The Black resolution undoubtedly IS 1600×1200 pixels, the color and white resolution is 800×600. And since most text is black, text would display at 1600×1200 pix.
    You’d only be experiencing 800×600 pixels if your text is lighter than FF,00,00; 00,FF,00; or 00,00,FF (meaning, if it’s lighter than full red, blue or green).
    If the text is written in dark green, blue or red, the resolution will be interpolated with the black pixels  @ 1600×1200 pixels.

    The mirasol screen also (much like Toshiba’s screen that they developed for the Ectaco Jetbook/mini series), has a good contrast ratio at certain angles of light interval. At other intervals the image would look blurred out, less contrasted; while the jetbook pretty much looks the same no matter how you hold it (save for the reflection of the light source on the screen).

    Battery: E-ink 10x longer than mirasol’s LCD.
    Resolution: Jetbook displays nearly ALL A4/lettersized PDF pages perfectly,while the Mirasol does not. You can zoom in, but when the text is not columnized you’d have to start reading in landscape mode, (which means more page flips).

    ==>>Jetbook is clear winner!

    However, what you can do with the mirasol, and can’t with the jetbook color, is provide minimal background light for better colors in totally dark environments.

  • http://goodereader.com/blog/ Good E-Reader

     This is all true and you are a fine man! Jetbook Color was shipped to me with the english firmware loaded in, so they did some work. They left the unit on for 2 weeks, took another 1 week to get to me, and was stil more then half full on the battery life while in standby mode all this time. Since mirasol is Android, which is a battery log, you will be lucky to get 8 hours of full use of it. I think I like the Jetbook Color more, it has obvious drawbacks, but nothing some firmware updates should not fix. I am excited about whats next.

  • AlexM

    I have jetbook Color unit and I’m glad I did’t buy Kyobo :)

  • Pingback: Two ereaders with color E ink screens. It… | Andalys

  • uli

    Please correct me, if I am wrong…

    This is how I understand the specifications of the Jetbook Color: It has of a large E-Ink screen with a resolution of 1600×1200 black and white pixels that is not able to show colors. Above this E-Ink screen there is a layer with a repetitive pattern of color filters. This filter layer consists of 800×600 cells. Each cell has four sub-cells: One red filter, one green filter, one blue filter and one fully transparent sub-cell without any color filter. Every group of sub-cells covers four black-and-white pixels of the underlying E-Ink screen. This is very similar to the design of a color LCD screen in which each pixel consists of a set of three sub-pixels: Red, Green and Blue.
    If we want to specify the screen resolution of an LCD screen, we do not count the sub-pixels but the pixels. Each pixel is a complete group of sub-pixels. This means each pixel is capable of displaying the whole range of brightness and color. You can also put it like this: All pixels of a screen are identical.
    The same definition must apply to the Triton display: A pixel is the smallest element that is capable of producing the whole range of brightness and color. A pixel of the complete Jetbook screen (consisting of the EInk screen and the color filter layer) is therefore one cell of the color filter layer (consitsting of four sub-cells) and not one of the tiny EInk-Pixels. So, the screen resolution of the JBC display is only 800×600.

    Of course, Ectaco uses additional Subpixel rendering methods to enhance the visual appearance of the displayed black and white font. But this is practically nothing else as the ClearType-Option I can choose on every Windows computer. Subpixel rendering can be done with nearly every color screen. It is not an increase of the physical screen resolution and it is totally uncommon to specify only the sub-pixel resolution of a color display device! (Otherwise my Laptop I am currently using would have been specified to have a resolution of 3840×800 pixels.)

  • def4

    The Mirasol screen seems to have a rather heavy blueish tint.
    Is it as visible in person as it shows in the pictures and video?

  • http://goodereader.com/blog/ Good E-Reader

     Yeah i Noticed that too.

  • Pingback: Color E-Readers Finally Available to Consumers | Grannys Goodies

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  • Pingback: Color E-Readers Finally Available to Consumers | My Blog

  • Pingback: Color E-Readers Finally Available to Consumers | The RealN3ws Post

  • Arioch The

    Mirasol can be used in dark room ?
    Isn’t it purely reflective tech that features no backlight ?

  • http://www.facebook.com/benjamin.skinner1 Benjamin Skinner

    This is pretty awesome. I will be one of the first to pick up a new device that features a color E-ink display, I love my black and white e-ink for reading novels. The display will have to be quite large to interest me however because it will be solely for magazines, and comic books. Anyone who hasn’t taken a look at the tablets on the market today should look at a few of  these reviews. They convinced me to grab my Kindle Fire and I love it for on the go media and non-novel reading. 

  • Pingback: Jetbook Color and iPad 3 eReading Comparison Video – Good E | Ipad HD review

  • Printsofwhales

    Please print a photo, load onto each device and show all 3 side by side. Then WE can judge how faithfully they reproduce colour.

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